


Confetti Baby

by kay_cricketed



Category: 21 Jump Street (2012)
Genre: M/M, jenko actually digs doing the yarn work, post!movie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-03 23:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_cricketed/pseuds/kay_cricketed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Schmidt and Jenko attempt to navigate bread-loving anarchists, sneaky feminist Trekkies, bi-curious admirers, and their own ridiculous but evolving feelings (wait, what do you mean <i>feelings</i>) while undercover at college. Also, Jenko likes yarn work and Schmidt is trying to figure out why he said, "Let's make a baby." That could definitely be key in the whole, you know, "feelings" thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confetti Baby

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place after the events of the film. Probably, oh, a few months after the film. It is hard to write from these guys' perspectives because oh god, they are so often politically incorrect or offensive, so apologies for that. They are who they are. I kinda love them in spite of it.
> 
> And yes, there will be sex, and yes, this will be stupid long.

**i.**

 

There’s a bright blue shock of confetti caught on Jenko’s cheekbone. At first Schmidt thinks that’s a weird thing to notice when bullets are whizzing through the air above them and imbedding in the wall, but then he changes his perspective and decides that no, actually, that’s not too weird. Confetti is bright so it can stand out, anyway. That’s the entire purpose of confetti. Oh god. They’re surrounded by hardcore gang members with guns and no sense of humor, and they’re probably going to die, and Schmidt is _looking at confetti_ , what is wrong with him? Seriously, _what_ is wrong with him? This whole investigation has been a mindfuck from start to prom finish; he feels like his head isn’t on straight yet, like maybe the picture hasn’t come into focus. Though he’s seeing color. Though he’s hearing Jenko’s breath come short and tight beside him.

“Let’s do this,” Jenko says.

Schmidt says, “Let’s make a baby.”

Jenko lifts his head a little. “ _What_?” The confetti flutters down to the perfectly ironed white of his tuxedo.

And Schmidt fucking chokes.

 

**ii.**

 

He has this habit of blurting out really honest shit when he’s under pressure. Usually, this habit chooses to kick in at the worst possible moment, and while it is far more sporadic than his habit of _choking_ , it’s infinitely more humiliating. For example, there was that time in sixth grade when he somehow ended up with the sub-popular group of kids—the ones that weren’t exactly popular because they didn’t play sports or have cool parents, but they were clean, good looking, maybe a little funny in the classroom—behind the football field bleachers during a game, whispering to each other in the dark and exchanging forbidden knowledge about tongues, lips, hands, teeth. Schmidt sat awkwardly in their midst, pretending he wasn’t terrified and ignorant. By the time it was his turn to say something, the anxiety had built to such a climax that Schmidt was soaked in sweat, his t-shirt revealing damp streaks. 

He’d opened his mouth and said, stupidly, “I think Anna Fawner has the best breasts in the whole middle school.”

That might’ve been okay if Anna Fawner wasn’t sitting _directly across from him_. The resulting fallout meant Schmidt had completely ostracized himself from even the sub-popular group of kids, and he ran yelping from the bleachers with a sore cheek and head, where Anna had pummeled him with tiny fists of fury. Schmidt sometimes wonders if Anna—new, grown-up Anna—now remembers that night with nostalgic amusement instead of rage, but that’s wistful thinking.

There have been other incidents, as well. Under the beady eyes of his teachers, Schmidt has said some pretty stupid shit. He has admitted to a dire need to masturbate in study hall, thinking that The Cure should’ve created the soundtrack to _Sense and Sensibility_ , and some undefined longing for a burrito as opposed to studying the periodic table. He has blurted out secrets to friends and enemies. He has confessed to things no adolescent or grown man should ever admit to. As he’s grown older, Schmidt has gradually built up a resistance to the urge—counting, digging his fingernails into his wrist, chanting _no no no shut up no_ in his head when the pressure builds—but it pops up every so often despite his training.

So, “let’s make a baby.” Right.

What does that even _mean_ , though?

 

**iii.**

 

“So, college,” says Schmidt. “That could be cool.”

“I fucking hate this division,” Jenko bitches. “The Captain’s doing it on purpose, too. He knows how much high school sucked and now he’s doing it to spite us. After he even framed our arrest record, he’s doing it to spite us, him and Korean Jesus.”

“Dude, you can’t blame Korean Jesus for your troubles.”

“I don’t know what _college_ is like,” says Jenko. He looks at Schmidt and there’s something frightened in him, something disquieting. “That’s not my place. That’s not somewhere that’s for me.”

God, it feels like there’s a ball of iron lodged in Schmidt’s esophagus, pinching his vocal chords. He wets his lips. He’s remembering the bathroom, suited up for prom and doing up his tie, the weight of the shotgun at his back. He’s remembering Jenko’s face—that expression he doesn’t want to see anymore, that fucking _resignation_. “Don’t be like that,” Schmidt says. “You’ve never tried it so you don’t know, okay? And think of the ladies.”

“The ladies would be awesome,” agrees Jenko, scratching his cheek. He grins like he’s got a secret, or maybe a really good joke.

“It won’t be like high school,” Schmidt tells him. What he means is, _I won’t fuck up again with you._ What he’s trying to say, it’s more like, _I promise, it’ll be me and you, like how it was supposed to be—none of that splitting up crap. No new best friends._

That night, they go out for a burger at a 24-hour diner with waitresses that call them honey and sweet stuff. Jenko orders two pieces of pie and he lets Schmidt scoop up and inhale all the whipped cream on top of them, because he doesn’t like whipped cream unless it comes out of a can, and because Schmidt has an addiction to anything that tastes like marshmallows. “I was thinking I’d try to major in science,” Jenko says around a mouthful of strawberry rhubarb crunch. “Like, ap chemistry.”

 

**iv.**

 

Look, Schmidt obviously doesn’t actually _want a baby_. He’s way too young for kids. His apartment is a shithole. He works awful hours as a cop, especially an undercover cop. Without financial stability, kids are out of the question. There’s also that whole single thing—because his last girlfriend turned out to be 18 and too good for him—and the fact that even if he were dating, rich, and kept a normal job, Schmidt is not father material. He feels like he hasn’t grown up yet. There’s still a row of action figures on his television set and Jenko makes them shoot each other whenever he’s over at Schmidt’s place, which is all the time, so actually, the action figures spend a lot of time in “battlefield of death” positions.

Yeah, he’s not ready for kids.

But it had to have meant something. And Schmidt is thinking about babies, okay, and he’s thinking about Jenko, and that’s a weird combination. Like, as weird as it can get. At the same time, Schmidt’s surprised because Jenko might be a _good_ dad. He remembers the way Jenko is with kids under nine years old (before they hit the bullshit stage), how he’d made faces at them in the park, and how he’d humor their stories and staring and cotton candy offerings. He also thinks about how Jenko is ridiculously sweet, when he’s not being a jerkwad. Jenko’s still a kid himself; he laughs at stupid jokes, he plays with sharp things he ought not to play with, and he has a physicality to him, a tactility, that means he can pick up a teenage nerd and bounce him around a party with nothing but total joy.

Schmidt just, you know, replaces the teenage nerd with a baby. It’s freakishly easy to see. Jenko. Bouncing baby. Jenko, making up awful, horny giraffe puppet plays. Jenko, treating his kid like the brat’s the fucking Einstein of the generation, even if the kid actually sucked at everything, even if the kid was worse than _him_. Jenko, baby, goofy grinning, baby, techno baby playlists, Jenko, baby, Schmidt. There is probably some kind of formula for hell there.

Jesus, what is Schmidt’s problem? What does it even matter?

And he knows about Jenko’s dad, right? He’s known for a long time. Even if he hadn’t, the way Jenko eagerly embraced brotherhood and Schmidt’s parents with open arms and total immersion would’ve told Schmidt everything he needs to know. But Jenko had told Schmidt about his dad a long time ago, because they’re best friends. “It’s not hard anymore,” Jenko had said without looking him in the eye. “Really, it’s okay.”

 

**v.**

 

College is a wasteland of booze, hipster chicks, potheads, pillow forts, and metrosexual fantasia. They’re placed in a local state university and instructed to investigate a club of anarchists who may or may not be involved in several illegal smuggling operations on the coast. It sounds badass, but it actually involves a lot of hoodies and sitting around in puddles, waiting for people to get their shit together.

Still, Schmidt and Jenko are roommates again and that’s awesome. They spend the first night decorating the dorm room’s cement block walls with posters, including a blow up of something that looks like the female genitalia, but which is actually, Jenko proclaims, a fucking flower. “This is art, man,” he says. Of course, Jenko has a thing about doves, too. So, grain of salt. Actually, Jenko has a thing about yarn work, doves, and things that look like vaginas but aren’t vaginas. That’s actually kind of weird, maybe Schmidt should ask him about that sometime.

Schmidt approves much more of the movie poster of _Hot Fuzz_. Something about the flower-cooch makes him feel very uncomfortable. He can’t, uh, look at it. But _Hot Fuzz_ , god, that is such a hilarious movie.

Trying to infiltrate a group of anarchists is almost impossible for them. Jenko makes a breakthrough in the fourth week by streaking through a student council assembly, shouting, “Down with organized government and state! Faith in human decency! This is not a representation but a farce! In fact, this is _balls_!” After that, they get a coded message to join, and spend a lot of time with the anarchists, who are pretty cool and have a love of freshly baked bread and the Beatles.

Jenko, reading one of the Photoshopped pamphlets and chewing on a sesame bun, says, “This stuff is pretty on target. Who’s this Proudhon guy?” And this is how Schmidt realizes Jenko, no matter what he says, loves to fucking learn the most random shit.

 

**vi.**

 

He doesn’t want to have a baby with Jenko. That is not what this is about.

No, he has to dig deeper than that.

 

**vii.**

 

“What’ll we do after we start to look old?” Schmidt asks while they’re lounging in their dorm room beds after curfew. He’s doodling in the margins of his multimedia course homework, listening to Jenko throw a football at the indents in the ceiling. Every time the football falls back down, Jenko catches it, then hugs it to his cheek or stomach for a while. “I mean, we can’t do undercover work as students forever.”

“Then we’ll move back to our old jobs,” says Jenko. “Or we’ll get in another division. We’ll get better at this and they’ll have to keep us on. We’ll be motherfucking superstars.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I just don’t want to stop doing this,” Schmidt admits. “This is more fun than the park ever was. Even after all—you know, all that happened.”

“I get you,” Jenko assures him. He smacks the football into his hand, and turns to squint at Schmidt from the bed. “I didn’t like being back in high school, but… I guess some of it was okay.”

“Yeah?” he asks, because he’s not sure what _Jenko_ liked about it.

“I still keep in touch with my geek boys,” Jenko says, pronouncing it like _bois_. “And I know stuff about ions now. And I’ll still punch any dickwad who says Pluto isn’t a planet, but at least I’ll know why they think so. So, there’s that.”

“Poor Pluto,” Schmidt says with great sympathy. Jenko pulls himself up on one elbow, eyes widening.

“I know, right? That poor fucking dude,” he says, “can’t catch a break. Who doesn’t love Pluto? They named Mickey Mouse’s _dog_ after him. The rest of the solar system must be shit-hot jealous, that’s all I’m saying.”

 

**viii.**

 

(There had been this moment, in between when Schmidt shot their perp’s motherfucking dick off, leaving it in the damp of the street, and when Jenko finally fell into blissfully drugged sleep in Schmidt’s bed—because he’s not a douchebag, all right, he was not going to let Jenko sleep on the air mattress on his childhood bedroom floor when said best friend got _shot_ for him and had been all achy—no, _he_ took the air mattress, let Jenko tangle in his blankets and snore it all out—but yeah, there had been this moment when Schmidt looked at Jenko, the white gauze wrapped tightly around his shoulder, and thought, _I can’t believe I told Eric you were my Rain Man._

He wanted to sit on the edge of the bed. He wanted to mess with Jenko’s arm to see how much it hurt, how much like shit Schmidt needed to feel to, what, to even it out maybe. He wanted to take stock of Jenko’s pulse, in case a beat or two became lost in the night. Schmidt had nearly lost so, so much.)

 

**ix.**

 

They end up spending the night in the library, hiding beneath the tables in the study rooms until the security guard makes his last rounds and closes up. Then, they duck back out, meet up with around thirteen other students, and make a giant pillow fort in the lobby. They bring funny hats and vodka. They pretend the library is their grand headquarters.

“It’s gonna be so awesome,” Schmidt gushes to Jenko when he tells him about the plan. “You have to come. Seriously, it won’t be any good without you.”

Jenko gives him a dubious look. “I dunno, man,” he says. “It’s the library. Why would you want to spend any time at all in the library if you don’t have to?”

“Because we’re not supposed to be there?”

“Sounds stupid.”

“You can’t tell me you’ve never wanted to get down with a girl behind the library bookshelves,” Schmidt tells him. “I mean, that’s even a jock fantasy. Sexy librarians. Isn’t it?”

Jenko reconsiders but says nothing.

“We’ll leave notes in all the books,” Schmidt coaxes. “Like, funny shit. We’ll write sex notes and leave them in the books so people can find them tomorrow. They’ll open the book,” he mimics it, “and be like, whoa! This isn’t… what is this? Oh my god! Clitoris? I just wanted to look up 18th century architecture in New Hampshire!”

That does it—the word clitoris usually does it. Jenko barks a laugh and covers his mouth, eyes bright. “Oh my god,” he croons. “Fucking _yes_. That’s awesome. Awesome!”

Schmidt brings the note cards and markers. He lets Jenko pick all the best hiding places for their anonymous masterpieces. When they sleep, it’s curled up in armchairs in the reference room, cheeks plastered to the vinyl. When they wake, the sun waters the walls a pale pink and Schmidt has never been this at peace in his whole stupid life.


End file.
